


The Lost and The Meek

by Hikario



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Mythology References, The Beast POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:35:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hikario/pseuds/Hikario
Summary: The Beast lives in the woodsThe woods that are The Beasteverything in between is only a song





	The Lost and The Meek

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hollenius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollenius/gifts).



The abominable edelwood. It seeps the black ichor that keeps my light. 

I devour it, drop by drop, and spin the smoke and ash into my dream.

It is my nature.

The edelwood is the constrictor. The rigid body of the innocent and noble lost soul. Squeezing, squeezing the sweet sweet juices. Sheltering them from the harsh and lonely forest. 

 

I am wrought of the edelwood. I am fuelled by the juices.

 

I am not alone in this. My kind have always walked these paths. The lonely ways. Roads between, roads to nowhere and everywhere. We lurk, at byways, waystops. We are watchers in the woods. We are Me.

 

There are others, who crawl into the light and blessed decay. The empty forms who wear the garden harvests. Some lurking things, in innocuous cottages.

 

They scatter husks, lost and lonely souls who have not even a path, not even a road forward to wander, to attend to with their empty minds. The denizens here fill every glade and valley and water-rimmed delta with lonely things singing shallow silly songs, stripped of all they once feared and needed. Petty things left to live with petty little wants to fill the gaping, horrible absence of the Unknown.

 

In every inbetween am I. They bubble up in groves and mires. They bleed from dreams of screaming trees. They echo and reflect and decay into shades. 

I am the shadow of the shade.

 

_The boy steps softly along the long dark path. Empty eyes watch silently an arm's length away, empty lost souls pressed close but held fast. This is a road for the living._

_“Ὀρφεύς” I call to the boy, “ἡδυμελίφθογγος”_

_I stroke the fear in his heart. You will lose her, you will lose her if you look, she is there just behind you, trust, trust, trust._

_“πιστεύω” I command. Trust._

_He clutches his lyre tightly. He is determined, still steady. This one will walk very far, for a very long time, I can see it. He will follow my road to the promised end, or nearly, and my road will match his fire, every step and one fathom more than he has the conviction to walk._

_I walk behind him up the long winding path, the only one behind him on the long, long road._

 

I watch for soft and gentle lights, traipsing in the trees. I watch for lost such bright things, amongst the edelwoods.

 

“Wirt, the trees are looking kind of spy-y.”

“Trees don't have eyes, Greg. They can't 'spy' anything.”

 

The boy in the tall pointy hat speeds up, blissfully oblivious. Golden mind shined clean.

 

“Well I feel spied upon! And the only thing that looks suspicious here is That. There. Tree.”

 

The tinier one points with accusation to the abominable edelwood that I lurk behind and amongst and within. He is a sharp creature, this tiny little child.

 

“Greg. Hurry up. I think I see a clearing not too far. I want to get there before it gets dark. ...well, darker.”

 

Silly little boy you are already in the dark. This forest is deeper and darker than you can know.

 

I glide from tree to tree, soul to soul, slipping through the knotted woods like a spider along the web. Checking on my prey, wrapped in silk. Scattered glimpses of despair in a confusion throughout my woods.

-a tug at the tether. A drop of oil is squeezed from a withered twig.

 

I am back in the flame, back in my heart, purring with the feed. Drop after drop after drop and I consume it all completely. Every lick of dream and sorrow and loss and pain and wallowing self-pitying saccharine misery I drink it all and my burning hunger flares for more more more.

 

“Her spark is growing faint” whispers smoke and crackle in the old man's ear as I dull in contentment, sinking into an ember to savour my break-fast. I am sated and I want more, my hunger peaked with every meal.

 

I met him in the woods outside a ramshackle cabin. His grief was fresh and raw and oozing into the frost-touched peat. The trees here small, young and new and good for little to a desperate man, not even shade. The young poplar branches were a scraggly fence in silhouette through which the cold wind howled. A lost woodcutter, no greater than a hundred strides from his own lonely hearth. No flame tended, no will remained, no one left but he in his own great lonely forest.

 

A shade remains within the corner of his heart, as I forget for him, as I erase. There I hide, white blade smile a glowing slash in the night that is his clouded mind. I coax and stroke the misery and fear, I purr and preen and play what some might call a trick. No. 

No trick but the truth that only I see. The truths I choose. The raw stuff which I wrought, that which I weave of the dark lost threads of fear and doubt within his mind. 

He himself creates the cloak of shameful fear that I pull tight against his light.

 

He is so afraid for she and him, for her and he, alone in these woods. He is so afraid

 

for her, alone

 

for him, in these woods

 

he, alone

-I dust his mind with cotton haze, I dim the light to sooth his pain, I dull the sharp bright reflection of her that casts gaze and warmth and life, grind it down with ash and scrape-

he is alone, he is alone in these woods, she, he is alone, he is alone, he is alone.

she alone in these woods, he is lost, she is lost, she is lost in these woods, she is lost, he is Alone

 

Walk

 

_Soft white snow chokes the sharp slight mountain path, and I growl quietly in anticipation. Three foolish men, three tasty morsels, patiently carry their litter through the whirling white wind. The great dark lacquer cask that is my home perches between them, swaddled against the wind in rich shimmering silk. The cloth gleams bright in the dying light, red-black-white like a yōkai's hair._

_“もっと早いて！” I urge them along. To freeze and shatter on the rocky cliffs will not sate my hunger, no, no. But the home of the mountain crone nears, invisible through the swirling snow, and there my prey can warm and rest._

_Yama-uba will carve her cut, yes, but a shallow meal shared is better than a freeze-burnt husk._

_“寒いです！それを凍らせないで！” Do not let me freeze! My urgent prompts spur them on, up to the mountain crest. Our footsteps are swallowed up in our wake. The door is waiting, open, as it always must._

_She urges them to leave, as she always must. I whisper to their fear, as i always must._

_The men stay, as they always must._

_I patiently wait for night, when the forbidden door in the home of Yama-uba will be opened by a fool, as they always must. I lurk in drunken dreams, licking my wet lips. Soon, we will feed, and in the morning I will begin a quest for the next fool who will carry my litter._

 

I whispered round the cursed thoughts which he held in his hands. I teased him deeper, down to the forest floor. I wrench from him his miserable shade to cast a wandering shadow, to carry for me mine own hearth.

“Come, wayward souls, and wander through the darkness. There is a light for the lost and the meek...”

I brought him here into these woods, these woods I call mine own. I helped him along when his legs did falter, I share my warmth when he surely should freeze. A gentle hand guides my shade, a gentle noose tightening more and more. How much the Woodsman spreads this forest, how much he helps me grow and grow. Like wind that carries the cottenwood fluff, and how great flame hatches free the pine, some seeds do move in bellies and bowels and some to spread in flash-flood tides, it is the nature of every woods to cast forth seeds and snare some soil, to grow and prosper and thrive and branch.

“I can put her spirit in the lantern. As long as the flame stays lit, she will live on inside.”

 

The abominable edelwood grows and grows, the soul soil it thirsts for burning with the brightest flame, hatching forth the freshest seeds of my outrageous discord. My thirsty sprawl. My creeping shade, my roaming shadow.

I am the beast that watches in the woods, I am the branches that scrape against the glass, I am the eyes of desperate light that blink bright behind your closed eyelids and wait, closed-darkly, in looming canopy and peering out from knotted trunk.

I wear faces on my growing belly. I carve the wood from ash and oil, I seer with torchlight the golden memories of those who fall into the wrong dark shaded woods, the wrong dark shaded corner of our mind.

 

“Beware, the beast!” he croons in my harvest, my fields, where I graze, “This is my lot in life, this is my burden” he shares and spreads and time paused-slow-long with the extending creep of misery and fear, the stretching time which lasts and lasts.

 

_“Vous fatigué?” I whisper, testing. The woman starts and stirs, turns peat-black eyes to me. I see her, and I am changed._

_“K'waay hla g̱id” I repeat. We have reached the sea, the great sea at the edge of the turtle's back, and I have chased the fur-hungry men for so long. I have basked in the voracious feast of their want, that for just a moment I forgot which Me was wrought in sitka and ceder._

_“Aganda hlg̱aag̱awaada.” I whisper in the ripple of the tide that licks at her toes, that sprays the bright moonlit shells that she has gathered in a basket. Keep it safe, save some in reserve._

_I lick and lap at the edge of her fear, past the startling Me to the softer place, where precious things are carved and cured. I must be careful, here, where Raven might watch me, might reach into my abalone shell with Raven's long sharp beak and pluck-_

_She tosses her basket high to the stars, emptying Me into the salted wash. I crack against the tide pool stones, and she does not run as she walks into the trees. Raven's caw in the sea roar echos, and I remember myself a thousand miles south where the Frenchmen I was here for feed me whisky as I burn in their bellies._

_I was hungry, and I was greedy as the ones in whom I thrive. Not for the first, not for the last, I purr in surrender and hide, in the warm fat belly that feeds and feeds, and I smile._

 

“I wonder what his mournful melody sounds like."

“What are you talking about.”

“The Beast. The old Woodsman said he sings a 'mournful melody'. I wonder if I know it.”

“Why would you know a mournful melody, Greg?”

“I don't know. Maybe it's one of the songs in my noggin.”

“I don't think so, Greg.”

“But I might!” the little one insists. It chirps a nonsense melody. A song of beautiful eyes and soft sweet candy that melts.

 

The haze softens basked in fearless song. The boy in the pointy hat is lost, lost, lost. His burden is his light, and a new hunger sparks. 

 

A burden to bear. A light to carry. A shadow to cast. A lost young soul.

 

“Grow, tiny seed, you are gone to the tree. Rise, till your leaves fill the sky...”

“Greg. Stop it. That's creepy.

“But what if it's the mournful melody in my darkness-addled noggin? And the way back home is lost in its mysterious lyrics!”

“That's absurd. No one puts maps in songs. Come on, Greg. It's getting dark.”

 

I watch, and I watch, and I hunger, and I watch. They roam like a needle darting in-and-out of my Unknown, and my new fresh hunger grows and it grows.

The little children step past my shadow, to a clear-cut field. I know the place. Rotting things that brush the roots of the edelwood trees, that gleam the ichor curses and breath with it some echoed life. Others not-me-but-like-but-not make temporary rule, prospering in sun's pale light in the rolling gardens carved cut and neat in ordered rows. The children will move on. Most do, who are not already from this strange place, where strange old hungers feed on those who have already passed from the light. I am patient and purring in the forest edge. 

I will check my traps and weave my net. I will glide through the spaces between light, and bring my own queer lightness to the souls of those in need.

I carry along, patient and swift, languid and eager. I have other tiny sparks to tend. There is smoke to breath, and drip-dripping oil to lap hungrily with flickering tongue.

I am patient and I am The End of each many paths. They will come to me an I will welcome them, I will raise the limbs of grasping needing edelwood. I will lift my mighty limbs

and give praise

to the fire.

**Author's Note:**

> Language and Culture notes:
> 
> Ancient Greek text assembled from www.perseus.tufts.edu  
> Ὀρφεύς – Orpheus  
> ἡδυμελίφθογγος – of the honey-sweet voice  
> πιστεύω – trust (verb)
> 
> The Japanese lore section heavily references Yamanba, a popular and frequently performed Noh play.  
> もっと早いて – Faster (command)  
> 寒いです！それを凍らせないで – It's cold! Don't freeze it
> 
> French  
> Vous fatigué? - You are tired?
> 
> The final lore section includes phrases in the Haida language, specifically Southern or Skidegate dialect, the language of the Haida nation of Haida Gwaii. Translations were sourced from www.firstvoices.com and verified across multiple sources. I attempted to include only general subject matter from Haida lore, as these stories and legends are the property of individual families or storytellers.  
> K'waay hla g̱id - Wait awhile  
> Aganda hlg̱aag̱awaada - Keep something until you need it
> 
> If any readers recognize mistakes or oversights in my use of cultural references or language, especially Japanese or Haida details, I welcome corrections or feedback.


End file.
